Just a couple of days ago nin said we were about due for a coffee story, which provoked the fates, though this wasn't one of my better incidents, as no lifeboats or fire extinguishers were involved. You may recall I weaned myself off my severe coffee addiction, but have since begun allowing myself a single cup a day. I've been using a fairly cheap Cuisinart coffee grinder since my Kitchen Aid grinder bought the farm, and over the course of time, it has become more and more temperamental, whirring along on nothing and requiring me to hit it and shake it repeatedly to get beans into the grinding zone. This morning it stopped responding at all to this delicate and subtle procedure, so I took it apart again (I'd done this a couple of times to see what was going on). This time I figured out the problem, as there is a feeder tube leading from the bean hopper and I realized that this had developed a thick layer of packed coffee grounds and the tube was easily less than half its original size: a sort of coffee atherosclerosis. After clearing that the grinder worked like new, making me feel pretty stupid for spending so much time over the last year beating on something that just needed a simple cleaning (I am just a caveman, and know nothing of your modern ways). And I have to tip my hat to this little Cuisinart for continuing to work after all the grinding (I had to run it through about five full cycles to get a batch of grounds) and physical abuse.

Yeah, well basically I think all diet soft drinks suck -- but I can't be drinking that much regular soda...

I actually acclimated myself to it via a fountain mix of regular Mt. Dew and Diet Mt. Dew over time -- starting with about 25% diet / 75% regular and slowly building the amount of diet over time. Took about a month to make the transition...